IDC: Comms market to rise

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Australia’s telco industry will present large opportunities for vendors in the communications market throughout 2004, according to new research from IDC.

IDC Australia senior analyst for mobile and wireless solutions, Warren Chaisatien, said wireless, voice, and data applications were all happening because of IP.

“IP is fundamentally the technology for growth and there will be strong growth this year in wireless carriers and LANs,” Chaisatien said. “Enterprise mobility will take hold in 2004 as carriers and IT solutions providers target the business market.”

He said IDC previously identified wireless email and Internet access as the two most common business applications in use.

“This year with the availability of Wi-Fi and 3G, business users will incorporate back office applications such as CRM and ERP,” Chaisatien said. “This is where IT companies come into play with wireless aware applications. We are seeing CRM and ERP application vendors develop products that are wireless enabled by cutting suites into modules making them more mobile.”

IDC predicts the following industry trends throughout 2004 and plans to conduct a more complete sizing of the market within a few months:

* RFID will dominate vendor agendas and headlines.

* Enterprise Wi-Fi grows while hotspots race on.

* Enterprise mobility packs momentum.

* Watershed year for 3G.

* Converged devices take off.

* SIP goes mainstream in 2004.

* Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) will prove its business case.

* IP video surveillance will make inroads.

* IP telephony boom.

* Telstra sale back on the agenda.

IDC sees FWA, or “last-mile broadband” as a disruptive technology which could be very effective for rural areas.

“There are quite a number of technologies that fit the [FWA] profile well,” Chaisatien said.

Part of the strong growth would be the uptake of IP VPN networking services and the acceptance of IP telephony as a mainstream technology, Chaisatien said.

Regarding the much talked about RFID market, Chaisatien said although it would attract a lot of vendor and media buzz, actual revenues from the technology would be years away.

“This year there will be a lot of marketing and awareness around RFID but no revenue in 2004 or 2005,” he said. “The market will take off in 2006 and 2007 depending on how the trials go. These trials will get business users thinking about how the technology can help.”

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